September 2009 Archives

It's not actually posted, but the sentiments are true enough.

On the other hand, I never know when my auto-pilot is going to show up. She doesn't even knock. She got here about an hour ago. Did a load of laundry, made the bed, and started separating toiletries into allowed and not allowed.

She was here when we left for Rome, but apart from that, since I haven't had to fly to work for 10 weeks, she's been scarce.

(Yes. Ten. Weeks. Hello, on-line training.)

I've had time to do lots of things.

Fix up my yard.

Use Visio for evil. (That's the software I drew the flowchart in, Mom. It's sarcasm. I'm not evil. Weird, yes. Evil, hardly.)

Get every electronic document I have onto one hard drive.

Read the urban dictionary.

Spend hours listening to new music.

Build outdoor furniture.

Invent toe bowling.

Which, naturally, is played with a baseball.

And a friend.

I did it with my first house. Looked at it and saw what it might be. The thought of what it was going to take to get it there didn't discourage me, because I was an idiot and had no clue just how much work I was facing.

In retrospect, it worked out well.

My house in Milwaukee was far from a fixer-upper. It just had paint colors I couldn't tolerate. And some ugly light fixtures. I didn't like my job, and I didn't like it up there. The house never felt like home, and I find myself skpping the whole time up there in my head.

When I think of "my last house," it's actually two houses ago. The one that needed fixing up.

This house. Well.

It's two miles from my parents. Less than that to Bill's. Ten minutes to the airport. And blocks from a gas station that sells actual half and half.

Perfect size. Garage. Fireplace. Big closets. Attached garage plus a huge building out back.

But, oh, so very aesthetically displeasing when I bought it.

Just like the first house, I looked beyond. Just like the first house, I was not discouraged about what it was going to take to get from here to there.

Unlike the first house, I now knew precisely what it was going to take.

To get it from here...

... to something other than that.

Like maybe this.

My initiation into the world of Facebook coincided with a lack of updates to pondring.

(XM Radio is playing "Angie.")

(And welcome new readers Kevin and Soo.) (Soo - get on FB.)

For a while I had them linked together. Anything posted here got updated there, except the pictures didn't carry over. I didn't know the reason, and I still don't know the reason. I only know that I disabled the automatic update.

So if you're not clicking on a link somewhere, or already know this is here, then you're not getting updates.

And that's alright with me. I mean I like FB. Really I do. I've caught up with friends from many years gone by. But pondring. Come on. Around much longer than Facebook, and without the annoying ads telling me how I can meet other singles.

I went out and read dooce this morning. She's made a new page of just her hate mail.

Further reinforcing my decision to not allow comments on pondring.

Come to think of it, I might have disabled the email link as well because I was having trouble with spam.

Oh, how I do enjoy clever people.

No, the entries from 1997 to 2008 were never deleted. They were takn off the links of the main page, but still exist.

If you go here, then you will be on a page with a back button that will take you to the earlier entries.

Clever people will be able to tell from the link how the archives are organized.

Knock yourselves out.

So I've had on my electronic DL for some time to combine two external hard drives I have.

It was a potentially painstaking task. For the simple reason that my laptop is that of a road warrior.

The USB drives, not high-speed to start with because the laptop is over two years old, only work when they feel like it. And rarely does one work if there is another one plugged in also. The USB ports apparently have some personal space issues.

So if it ever came time to move lots of files, they all went through an intermediate location on my hard drive.

And then one day, yesterday, in fact, I hear a delivery truck out front, and go to the door. The FedEx guy is there with a box.

It's a brand-spanking new 64-bit R400. Which I am to use to test some images. But there isn't anything stopping me from borrowing those two functional USB ports for, oh, 15 minutes. A fraction of the time it would have taken me to get ONE folder moved to the intermediate location on my laptop.

Dear personal laptop: I have never complained about you. Apart from spilling coffee in you twice, I have always taken good care of you and defragged you often, and mostly shut you down when I was supposed to. Except for two weeks ago when I accidently set you in a very small puddle of water, you have ALWAYS done everything I've asked you to do. And really, the puddle? My bad. I don't blame you for the several hour work stoppage.

And due to my sometimes poor electronic media management habits, I know I abuse your USB drives. I don't blame you a bit for your odd little quirks. I know the six or seven times you have slid off something and landed on a plugged in USB drive probably haven't felt good either.

Many of your keys are faded. There are two permanent scars on your space bar from my thumbs. Cause you know I like to type. The oils from my skin have long since worn one of your stickers off, and moved another one into an unnatural position near the left mouse button on the touch pad. Which, sadly, has also quit working.

I still haven't complained. When the external mouse I got quit working due to your USB issues, I taught myself to use the left mouse button above the other left mouse button.

So please, dear laptop, don't be jealous of that, uh, bigger brighter, substantially faster, and highly-unlikely to leave a pile of dust if one tips it over 64-bit machine over there.

It's not even going to get my wireless network key. It means nothing to me. In four minutes when it's done consolidating 30 gigabytes of data, I'm going to leave it some money on the nightstand and forget about it. Okay?

We good?

Cause it's done. I can mark the task off my list.